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Phase 1: The Crush

Let’s start with the initial crush you have on someone. You get butterflies in your stomach when you see them come through your marketing forms. Excited that they’ve shown some interest in you, you email them. Okay — no opens or clicks, that’s fine. Send another email. Send another email. Send…another email? Surely they’ll come around and like you back, won’t they?

Have you ever been in that position where you had a huge crush on someone for a long time but your feelings just weren’t reciprocated? Wouldn’t it have been SO much easier to just find out they weren’t interested from the very beginning, instead of pining over this person for weeks, months, maybe even years? Better to know and be able to move on rather than spending a lot of time and effort on someone who was never interested to begin with. Now, apply that to your marketing situation. Isn’t it better to have someone opt out easily to let you know they’re not interested, instead of wasting your effort emailing people who are clearly not even engaged enough to open your email and hit “unsubscribe”? That’s where confirmed opt in can help! It lets you weed out the prospects who don’t actually reciprocate your feelings and allows you to focus all of your efforts on the prospects who do care to receive your emails…and even look forward to them!

Phase 2: Going Steady

Say the crush phase actually goes really well and now you’ve got someone on the line. You like them. They like you. You’ve changed your Facebook relationship status, your Twitter pic, and your Instagram is filled with relationship-related pictures. In this stage, you know they’re interested, so keep that love alive! Send them emails to let them know you’re thinking of them, and that you think XYZ product would be amazing for them. Offer them discounts for their loyalty to you. Make sure they know you think they’re special and you love everything about them. It costs way more (some studies say up to five times more!) to obtain a new customer than it takes to hold onto one, so don’t let this prospect be the one that got away! Do everything you can to keep the relationship as strong as you possibly can, but don’t overwhelm them. Leverage our email recency and frequency to find the happy medium that works for you and your business.

Phase 3: The Break-up

Sometimes, prospects just lose interest. Slowly, they stop opening your emails or returning your calls or sending you as many <3 texts. You start to feel yourself losing them, so it’s time to try to win their hearts back. But what do you say? How do you find the right combination of words to make them see how you feel? A recent ReturnPath webinar made some fascinating discoveries, and found that win-back emails with shorter subject lines containing “Miss you!” or “Come back!” achieved a 13% and 12.7% read rate, respectively. Maybe a discount might bring them back? ReturnPath also found dollar amounts were twice as successful at driving opens over percentage discounts, so make sure to work that into your campaign (but probably not your email subject lines, as this can be interpreted as spammy)!

Sometimes, even after all that work, prospects just aren’t interested anymore, and that’s okay.

It’s not the end of the world, you can cut them out of your life and still be okay. Blast some Adele, eat a pint of ice cream, and get back out there to findsomenew leads. Maybe attend some events to find that new special someone to market to. There are plenty of other prospects in the sea — go out and find them!